Q&A: Hall of Famer Gary Jobson chats on all things sailing

April 12, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Gary Jobson, past president of U.S. Sailing and chairman of the Leukemia Cup Regatta. He was in Orange County to speak at the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club about his life, the future of sailing and his bout with Lymphoma. PAUL RODRIGUEZ, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Gary Jobson (left) and sailing companion John Martin (right) competed in the 1966 Penguin International Championship at Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey aboard Jobson's boat Peanut. That year, Jobson took home the Powell Trophy for most Outstanding Junior Sailor in Barnegat Bay. COURTESY PHOTO

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Gary Jobson, past president of U.S. Sailing and chairman of the Leukemia Cup Regatta. Jobson is the author of 18 sailing books and was in inducted into the America's Cup Hall of Fame in 2003 by the Herreshoff Marine Museum. Also in 2003 he was diagnosed with lymphoma but is now cancer free. PAUL RODRIGUEZ, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Gary Jobson, past president of U.S. Sailing and national chairman of the Leukemia Cup Regatta, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's sailing program since 1993. PAUL RODRIGUEZ, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Gary Jobson (second, left) and Tod Harris (left) get ready to open the 2012 America's Cup World Series in Rhode Island for NBC. Jobson won an Emmy for his production of sailing at the 1988 Olympic Games in South Korea, and won an Emmy for the 2006 Volvo Ocean Race on PBS. COURTESY PHOTO

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Gary Jobson sails on the Toms River in New Jersey in 1964. At age 14, Jobson would regularly hitch rides to sail in regattas in Philadelphia, and participated in races year-round. COURTESY PHOTO

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Gary Jobson, past president of U.S. Sailing and chairman of the Leukemia Cup Regatta. He was in Orange County to speak at the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club about his life, the future of sailing and his bout with Lymphoma. PAUL RODRIGUEZ, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Gary Jobson, past president of U.S. Sailing and chairman of the Leukemia Cup Regatta. He was in Orange County to speak at the Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club about his life, the future of sailing and his bout with Lymphoma.PAUL RODRIGUEZ, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

NEWPORT BEACH – Warming up for the next hour of speaking, America's Cup winner and National Sailing Hall of Fame member Gary Jobson takes large sips of water between every few sentences.

"I would like to thank our sponsor, Gosling's Rum," he jokes to the crowd of more than 200 at Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club. His throat is rough and scratchy, due to demands he's placed on himself. "I was in Portland yesterday, and Michigan and Savannah, Ga., before that." The day after his stint in Newport Beach on April 5, Jobson's week included stops in Rhode Island, Cleveland and Florida, and the week after Minnesota and New Jersey.

Five minutes in, Jobson gets in his groove, rolling effortlessly from topic to topic, expounding on his early days of sailing in New Jersey's Barnegat Bay, to the trials of being a TV commentator for NBC trying to dissect – in layman's terms – the fast-paced catamaran sailing coming to this year's America's Cup race in San Francisco Bay.

The speaking engagement is one of 17 events benefiting the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) Jobson will participate in this year, adding to his total of more than 300 events he's been a part of since becoming chairman of the regatta in 1994. Over the past 20 years, more than $43 million has been raised by sailors participating in Leukemia Cup Regattas held at harbors around the United States.

Jobson's involvement with LLS changed in 2003 when he was himself diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma, giving the world-renowned sailing tactician uncharted waters to navigate. Now cancer-free, he hasn't slowed down, wrapping up a three-year term as president of US Sailing, authoring a memoir of his sailing adventures and prepping to be a commentator for the America's Cup this summer.

Before flying off to another event, Jobson sat down with The Current to give his thoughts on growing up sailing on the East Coast, battling lymphoma and the state of US Sailing and what he learned from Ted Turner.

On sailing through New Jersey's winters:

Growing up in New Jersey in the 1950s and '60s, I was sailing full-time, year-round. At that time, there weren't many people that sailed year-round. It's cold in the winter time. There was frost-biting going on, but I just chose to do it. I look back, and I think, "How was I able to, at 14 years old with no driver's license, talk people into getting my boat to Philadelphia for a frostbite regatta? I would leave at 5:30 on a Sunday morning to go race that afternoon and come back that night. I was on a mission to sail all of the time.

On sailing with Ted Turner:

While Ted was an accomplished sailor and successful in his career, I played the role of tactician on his boat, and I never realized until decades later that I was helping him out as much as he was helping me. The sailing was easy for me, but the career part was a question mark: How do I do this? He was really helpful with that, and was actually a big reason why I got into sailing management and administration. Whether being captain of the sailing team in college, or president of U.S. Sailing, he explained to me that it's really good to be on the board of things, because when you're in the room and you're at the table, you can help make decisions and make things better. Really effect things. Better to be on the inside having authority and the ability to do things, than being on the outside as only a complainer.

On benefitting from the research he helped raise funds for:

I have to admit that for the first 10 years of being involved with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, I really didn't understand what a blood cancer was. I knew the difference between some of them, but I didn't really understand what it meant until being diagnosed in 2003.

I can tell you, I sure didn't expect to get one of the diseases. ... Kind of an ironic twist of fate. Happily, the treatments are getting better and the drugs are becoming more effective, and I ended up being the recipient of all of that research we had been raising money for. So, for that reason, I'm plugging away, helping out the best I can.

On professional vs. amateur sailors:

Looking back, I was probably one of the first to actually pioneer the concept of a professional sailor; but nobody's paying me any rights or royalty fees for it. Back in the day, it was "uncool" to be a pro; you wanted to be an amateur. Now, people make a lot of money getting paid to race, even though in my view it's overdone. There's far more people getting paid than really good professionals; everybody's got their hand out.

On California's recent fatal sailing accidents:

We had last year's Ensenada Race, the Farallones race up in San Francisco and the recent incident in the Islands Race. As president of U.S. Sailing, what I thought should be done in all of these cases, is to put together independent review panels to tell what happened. Be very straight about it: what went wrong, and how do our rules, regulations and safety requirements match up?

One thing that came out of all three reports was that sailors need more practical education in seamanship, common sense, safety practices and better communications. These are all automatic things, but in several of these cases, real mistakes were made. And you don't want to gloss it over.

On the inclusion of youth sailing in this year's America's Cup:

The Red Bull Youth America's Cup is a good idea to get young people engaged in sailing these boats. I'm sure we'll see some of them on America's Cup teams in the future. It's like the McDonald's All-American basketball game. You're watching TV and LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony are out there, and you start realizing these guys are going to have big careers.

On the future of sailing:

Here's the challenge for our sport, and it's the yacht club that have to do this: We must get the 23- to 40 year-olds involved in sailing. Right now, it's a time where it's hard to buy a boat – it's time and money – so clubs need to have fleets of boats to make it easy, and inexpensive memberships.

They really need to go out and recruit young people, because they're there. There are over 500 high schools now with sailing teams all around the country, and there are around 215 colleges with actual sailing teams, so we're producing the sailors, but they need a place to go. The yacht clubs need to open the doors up and welcome young people. If you can introduce sailing to a new generation, they'll stick around for a long time.

The Bahia Corinthian Yacht Club in Newport Harbor is hosting two Leukemia Cup Regatta events this year, starting with the youth and in-harbor races May 18-19, and the offshore regatta coming July 13.

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